


spin the wheel to win

by ThatAloneOne



Series: waltzverse [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, Waltzing, Wedding Fluff, and also PRETTY much everyone else in the cast, well I mean they're TRYING
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:27:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23073958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatAloneOne/pseuds/ThatAloneOne
Summary: When Aubrey’s father opened the package to find a homemade DVD with “DANI + AUBREY’S WEDDING” written on it in Sharpie, the package was returned to an end table by the front door so Aubrey’s father could find a paper bag to breathe into.Also known as: nobody knows what waltzing is and they're all having a crisis about it.
Relationships: Dani/Aubrey Little
Series: waltzverse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1658299
Comments: 13
Kudos: 33
Collections: Aether's Promptathon





	spin the wheel to win

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DemiMuiraquita](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemiMuiraquita/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [DemiMuiraquita](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemiMuiraquita/pseuds/DemiMuiraquita) in the [aether_prompts](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/aether_prompts) collection. 



> Spoilers for the punchline of the fic in the end notes, but possible slight warning for referenced (canonical) character death?
> 
> Anyway this is a followup to a much calmer and sweeter fic. This fic is just... comedy. It's a comedy fluff wedding. Don't expect much more of it than that. This is what you get when you take advantage of submitting prompts to my new prompt collection.

One day, in the midst of the weather deciding that summer was overrated and maybe everything should chill out a little, a package was delivered to Aubrey Little’s childhood home. A few days later, after the package had gotten in a good sulk, it was picked up again and forwarded to where her father actually lived.

When Aubrey’s father opened the package to find a homemade DVD with “DANI + AUBREY’S WEDDING” written on it in Sharpie, the package was returned to an end table by the front door so Aubrey’s father could find a paper bag to breathe into.

* * *

First, a stunning vista. Birds chirped from the forest like they’d been cast in a Disney movie. The trees waved in the wind, and the wind spun up some leaves into whirling dervishes of charm. It was into this scene that Jake Coolice crashed, his snowboard unaware that any snow had long since vanished. He saluted at the camera, or possibly whoever was behind it and said, “Hey, Mister Aubrey!”

“ _Jake_ ," someone said. The camera trembled for the first time, briefly catching a crowd and a tent before it refocused. "That's not-"

“Aubrey says sorry for the whole DVD thing,” Jake continued, blissfully unconcerned. His investment in appearing in the video was clearly dwarfed by his investment in preparing his snowboard for another running start. “And she’d totally have invited you but things sort of just happened so! Welcome to the wedding!”

With that, Jake skidded offscreen. After another moment of stunning scenery, which was far less calming than the first time it had appeared, someone from behind the camera asked, “Hey, he knows Aubrey’s dating someone, right?”

* * *

“Hmm,” Aubrey’s father said, in a stressed sort of way.

* * *

Aubrey was dipping Dani with great enthusiasm, and she was so focused on making sure her wife — her _wife_ , that was wild, couldn’t wait to say that _all the time_ — didn’t fall skull-first onto a rock that it took her a second to notice that nobody was really… reacting. She pulled the both of them upright, switched the rose to her hand so she had a mouth free to kiss Dani, kissed Dani because priorities, then turned to the waiting audience. And huh. She’d been right. They weren’t applauding, or looking emotional.

Well. They did look emotional. The thing was that the emotions on display in the crowd were on a scale from _dumbfounded_ to _outraged_ instead of the ideal _overcome with affection and/or dance envy._

“Was it the roses?” Aubrey said. At her side, Dani daintily unstuck a rose petal from a fang. “I’ll admit, the rose-in-the-teeth was a bit much.”

“I thought the traditional wedding dance was a waltz, yes?” Minerva said. Between her military training and weeks gleefully researching Earth's quaint marriage customs, she was the first to rally back her wits. “Calming music, waltzing, romance, all that?”

Aubrey frowned. “That _was_ waltzing.”

Minerva stared.

Aubrey stared back.

“Aubrey,” Barclay said gently. “I don’t know what that was-”

“It was salsa!” Minerva declared, with the fervour of someone trying to make sense of the senseless.

“-but that wasn’t waltzing.”

Dani’s arm had snaked around Aubrey’s waist. “Definitely waltzing, Barclay.” She pinched Aubrey lightly, where the dress thinned into lace enough that Aubrey could feel the warmth of her wife’s fingers through it. “Aubrey’s an expert at it. Taught me back at Amnesty, whipped up this little number.”

Barclay, who until now had been filming everything for Aubrey’s father, handed the camera to Jake. It said a lot that having Bigfoot stalking towards her with _that_ look in his eyes didn’t scare Aubrey, but she’d been friends with Barclay for the longest of anyone at this wedding, except maybe Mama. Even so, Aubrey braced herself for-

“That’s not waltzing,” Barclay declared, arms akimbo, body tense with movement about to erupt. " _This_ is waltzing.”

* * *

“You know,” Aubrey’s father told the screen contemplatively, “I wonder how much of their wedding budget went towards the break dancing Chewbacca. That couldn’t have come cheap.”

* * *

Aubrey hadn't braced herself enough.

Duck was now attempting to waltz, which was concerning. At first, Aubrey had thought it was the chicken dance but everyone else was insisting that this was some sort of square dance. Of all of them, Minerva seemed to be taking it hardest.

“Duck Newton, have I wronged you somehow?” She was wringing her hands now, and it was weird to see someone as tall as imposing as Minerva looking so insecure. “Has my training served so little, Duck Newton? How could you be deceiving your _friends_ , Duck Newton-“

"I’m not _deceiving_ them!” Duck protested. He’d stopped do-si-doing, at least. “This is waltzing! They teach it to kids in schools, right?”

“I mean,” Aubrey said. “No?”

“What,” said Duck.

Minerva made an anguished noise.

* * *

Mama only got halfway through doing whatever the _fuck_ she was doing with her arms before the entire wedding complement was shouting her down. She was banished to the “does not know how to waltz” table, and lowered herself onto the bench next to Aubrey.

“The things you learn in old age,” she said thoughtfully, like this was some sort of learning moment. Aubrey caught herself wishing they’d eloped, except that this was already them eloping and there was no escape. 

* * *

Moira seemed to think waltzing was that thing that tweens did when someone played Flo Rida's _Low_. Except she was a ghost, so Aubrey had to watch as Moira shook her ass through the floor, sinking until only her head remained visible.

“WHO TOLD YOU THAT WAS CALLED WALTZING,” Mama bellowed, at the same time as someone else howled “ _NO!_ ” 

All the rest of the ghosts present simultaneously decided that getting down into it was the best dance move idea they’d ever seen. Aubrey stared at Dewey’s head, which came up to about the top of her Docs, and vaguely wished that she and Dani had foregone the whole dancing part of the wedding to go make out in woods somewhere in Sylvain, where there was nobody around to dance aggressively at them.

* * *

Minerva had given up and was now sitting on the side of the dance floor staring off into space like it, unlike the rest of the once-residents of Amnesty Lodge, could give her answers.

In the distance, Jake Coolice had started Fortnite dancing.

* * *

“You’re all wrong,” someone declared, and Aubrey’s heart nearly stopped. She felt like she was in some sort of stupid novel, like Dumbledore was going to descend from the sky and tell her that imagining things made them true because floating before her was-

“Hmm,” Aubrey said, in a way that definitely didn’t sound like she was choking on her own vocal cords.

“I’ll just need a moment to prepare,” said Ned, in that all-too-familiar tone that filled Aubrey with certain and imminent dread. He floated off, through the drapery of the tent Aubrey had been married in what seemed like an eternity ago.

“What the fuck does a ghost need to prepare?” she whispered. Dani, who had been banished from the waltzing a long time ago, was holding her hand so tight her whole arm was aching. Aubrey blinked a few times, narrowing her eyes at the wedding tent. Her brain wasn’t quite back online yet but. Had that. Had that been-

Ned rolled through the wall of the wedding tent, upside down and then right side up again in a split second. He was in a hoop. The hoop was spinning. He looked like he’d been badly photoshopped into this reality from the one where the afterlife was a circus. He wiggled in the hoop, spinning end over end like this was somehow, the most reasonable waltz of all.

It was, in fact, _not_.

Aubrey just pointed at him. Her jaw was somewhere at the bottom of the world. “HEY!” she yelled, somehow.

“HOLY SHIT."

“NED?”

"NED _NO_ -“

“ABSOLUTELY NOT-”

“PLEASE, HUMANS, TELL ME THAT THIS HAS BEEN NAUGHT BUT-”

* * *

“-wife and wife. You may kiss!”

Aubrey and her wife hadn’t waited for the officiant, kissing in a over-enthusiastic mashing of lips and tangling of veils. The officiant, a stately looking older woman leaning on an ornate wooden cane mouthed something that looked like, _kids these days_.

The camera swung around, getting footage of the crowd leaping to their feet and beginning to stream out of the tent the ceremony had been held in. There was something off about each of them: teeth, shining orange eyes, a transparent and entirely non-corporeal form. Aubrey and her new wife, Dani, were pushing through the stream of people, hands still clasped, everyone around them clapping them on shoulders or hovering arms through theirs.

Then the camera swung back to main area of the tent, panning slowly over each of the decorations. It almost was professional, except for the fact that whoever was taking the video had apparently forgotten it recorded audio as well as video.

“You’ve been keeping track of how much space you have left, right?” Jake asked. The snowboarder from earlier waved at the camera as it passed him, delighted.

“‘Course,” someone else said. If Aubrey’s father wasn’t mistaken, the speaker was the Chewbacca impersonator. A headache throbbed, somewhere in his near future. “Don’t want to miss out any of the dance! Aubrey and Dani have been planning it for _weeks_.”

“Just be careful-”

“I’m not going to record over their wedding,” Chewbacca said grumpily. “I’m a couple hundred years old not a couple _thousand,_ Coolice.”

Just beyond the opening of the tent, Aubrey and Dani were face to face, clasping hands. They each held a rose in their mouths and looked inordinately pleased with themselves.

Really, Aubrey’s father thought, they’d been the closest to waltzing out of anyone, if a little too theatrical. He didn’t know what the whole production was about.

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Ned appears, as a ghost. That means he's dead. 
> 
> The dance he's doing is something approaching [THIS](https://youtu.be/yJZgCAUOd80?t=127), which you can blame Demi for. As per the note in the previous fic, she managed to say the wrong words at the wrong time and now Ned thinks waltzing is spinning in a wheel. You're all very welcome. 
> 
> For the record, Demi is also to blame for the title.


End file.
